


The Hurricane's Chasing Us All Underground

by lit_chick08



Series: The Only Crime is To Lose [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Addiction, F/F, Homophobia, Homosexuality, M/M, Organized Crime, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_chick08/pseuds/lit_chick08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tyrells chose the winning side, but this doesn't feel like winning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hurricane's Chasing Us All Underground

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Hurricane" by 30 Seconds to Mars

The room smells like a distillery, the blackout curtains pulled tightly to keep the morning sunlight out, furniture tipped over, half-eaten room service dishes everywhere. It looks like a scene out of _The Hangover_ , complete with a puddle of vomit on the floor, and the whole thing turns Willas Tyrell’s stomach.

“Jesus!” Garlan hisses, pulling the collar of his shirt over his nose. 

Willas shakes his head in frustration and disgust, looking at the lump buried beneath the soiled comforter on the king-sized bed. “Get him up,” he orders his younger brother, trying to maneuver his crutches around the debris on the floor to reach the curtains.

He’s had fifteen years to get used to the crutches he needs to walk, and most days Willas manages not to curse his mangled leg and the accident that lead to his state. No one forced him to get on that motorcycle; no one forced him to race Oberyn Martell. The orthopedists all say it’s a miracle he can even walk at all given the extent of the damage to bone, muscle, and ligament. But whereas once he could have strode as easily to the bed as Garlan, hoisting their baby brother up without breaking a sweat, now Willas can only order others to do it for him. So long as he wants to remain standing, his hands must be clamped around the handles of the crutches, the plastic cuffs around his biceps.

Carefully bearing his weight on one crutch, Willas jerks the cord of the curtains, bright light exploding through the dark room, making Loras groan pathetically as he attempts to evade both the light and Garlan’s grip. With the comforter discarded and the darkness chased away, Willas sees just what terrible shape his brother is truly in. This has been the longest of Willas’s disappearances, seven full days before their father’s men could find him. He’d smartened up some since the last time he did this; this time he stole Aunt Mina’s credit card instead of their father’s.

It doesn’t look or smell as if Loras has bathed in a week, his curls greasy and sticking to his head. His skin is dangerously pale, with deep purple circles beneath his glassy eyes, and his bottom lip is cut. Garlan winces when he sees the prominence of Loras’s ribs and though their brother’s arms are still leanly muscled, Willas easily spots the fresh track marks in the crooks of his elbows.

“Oh, fuck,” Garlan groans, scrubbing his bearded face. Willas can’t blame him; the last time Loras relapsed, it was Garlan who found him near death in Camden, high as a kite and badly beaten. Loras had spent three months at Hazelden after that, and the eighteen-month stretch of sobriety that followed lulled all of them into a false sense of security. Since Loras started using, the longest he’d managed to stay clean was eight months, and all of them, even Margaery, thought he’d finally made it over the hump.

“Get him in the shower,” Willas instructs, his mind racing, “and whatever you do, don’t leave him alone in there.”

Garlan nods, knowing the routine. He hoists Loras up with two arms hooked in his armpits, half-carrying, half-dragging him to the large bathroom. They have done this dance too often, and they know their roles: Garlan does the actual heavy lifting, Willas searches for Loras’s stash, and Margaery makes the excuses to protect him.

The syringe is on the bedside table with his lighter and spoon; Willas collects nearly a dozen baggies, amazed Loras hasn’t managed to OD in the past seven days. The Lannister dealers all know better than to sell to Loras under penalty of death, a decree passed down from Tywin Lannister himself after Loras started riding with Jaime. The low-level dealers who don’t work for Tywin don’t sell nearly as good of a product; during one of Loras’s falls off of the wagon, he ended up shooting heroin cut with cleanser, sending him into cardiac arrest.

This is a disaster on every level. Never mind that Loras is using again and has to start recovery all over again; forget that their poor mother is going to spend the next few weeks in a Valium haze as she pretends Loras is just on vacation. Ignore the fact that Mace announced his campaign for mayor, complete with anti-drug initiative. No, what concerns Willas, what _terrifies_ him, is that the Lannisters are trying to pin responsibility for Jaime’s kidnapping on Loras.

He never agreed with his father’s plan to partner with the Lannisters. Everyone knew the Lannisters were only loyal to the Lannisters, but Mace insisted that was fine since Tyrells were only loyal to Tyrells. Mace packed up their whole family, bringing them to Philly from Chicago. Well, everyone but Willas. He was left behind to run Highgarden while Mace began to build his political career with Tywin Lannister’s assistance. Between his father’s money and Tywin’s connections, promising Margaery to Joffrey was just the icing on the cake.

Willas can’t prove his sister poisoned Joffrey Baratheon but neither can Tywin. 

When there were openings in Jaime Lannister’s elite crew of men, Willas begged Mace to keep Loras away. Loras was always a crack shot, too cocky for his own good, and desperate for praise. Combined with his emotional instability and drug use after Renly’s death, it was a recipe for disaster. But Mace wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that Loras would be fine and there was no reason he shouldn’t help the family.

The panicked phone call from Margaery brought Willas to Philadelphia, his usually calm sister recounting how Jaime Lannister was kidnapped and now no one could find Loras. He wasn’t among the dead at the scene, and there were already rumors starting Loras was a part of it. They had to find Loras first, had to keep him safe from the Lannisters and find whoever took Jaime.

Willas isn’t a criminal, not in the way his family is. He runs Highgarden, a massive corporation that owns tens of thousands of acres of farming land; the closest he gets to anything scandalous is the Casino Night the nonprofit arm of the company holds once a year. Willas is not built for such a life.

But he is going to need to figure out how to be fast or else they’re all in trouble.

* * *

Garlan is used to being forgotten. He is not as intelligent as Willas, as talented as Loras, or as cunning as Margaery; Garlan is an average man and this doesn’t bother him. Whereas all of his siblings spends their days worrying themselves sick over everything, Garlan gets to have an easier life. Often at his father’s side, Garlan does what he is told and goes home at night to his wife. That’s all he wants. What’s good for the family is good for him.

But as he wrestles Loras into the shower, turning on the cold water and bracing himself for the sting of it, Garlan wishes his family forgot more often.

He’d been excited when they moved to Philadelphia, anxious for a change. In Chicago Willas would always be in charge, but for a brief moment Garlan fantasized there’d be something for him here. Instead he began to realize just how little Mace seemed to think of him. If Willas hadn’t been in the accident, if he was still the athletic boy Garlan remembered watching race up and down the soccer field, Garlan wouldn’t have had a place in Highgarden at all. 

“I’m the spare,” he told Leonette once, drunk and bitter and more than a little humiliated at how Mace crowed about Loras’s prowess on the range. Garlan stood there, clenching his jaw and hoping his embarrassment didn’t show, and Leonette seemed to understand then that the family she married into wasn’t the image Mace fought so hard to project.

He thought about leaving once, giving up his blind devotion to his family and moving out to Missouri to be near Leonette’s family. Her father liked him and offered him a job, and Leonette didn’t hide how much she didn’t appreciate the way she seemed utterly dismissed by his family. It would’ve been an impossibly normal life, and it didn’t seem so bad at all.

And then Renly Baratheon died and everything went to hell.

Garlan never really understood what made Loras’s boyfriend so special. In his opinion, Loras could’ve done better than the spoiled youngest Baratheon who seemed to be far more style than substance. Renly liked to play gangster and then expected Loras to clean up the messes, and Garlan often wished they’d break up, that Loras would come to his senses and find someone better. He grossly underestimated how much Loras loved Renly, how much Renly’s death destroyed him.

In those first few years after he died, Garlan finally had a purpose in the family: Loras’s keeper. If he was using, it was Garlan’s job to find the dealers and pay them off. If debts were owed, Garlan paid them. If he was detoxing, it was Garlan’s responsibility to stay with him until it passed. And when it came time to force him into another rehab, it was Garlan who did the manhandling into the cars. Somehow Loras’s sobriety became Garlan’s job, and when Loras fell, it was Garlan’s fault.

Mace is furious with him, only speaking to Willas or Margaery over the last week. Garlan knows there is nothing he could’ve done, but Mace is convinced Garlan should’ve seen the signs, should have noticed Loras was using again. Never mind that Loras lives at home while Garlan just bought a house outside the city. Never mind that Garlan isn’t the one who pretends like Loras isn’t an addict.

“Garlan,” Loras slurs, his fingers curling into Garlan’s soaked shirt. His feet are a little steadier, but his eyes are still glazed, his pupils still blown.

Garlan grunts as he pulls him up a little higher, adjusting his grip. He suddenly remembers when Grandmother Olenna used to bathe them together as children in her swimming pool of a bathtub; Garlan had been a big kid and he used to “help” by lifting Loras out of the tub, proud of his strength. 

“It isn’t my fault,” Loras continues, struggling to lift his head.

Garlan bites his tongue to keep from spitting how it is _never_ Loras’s fault.

* * *

He’s withdrawing bad. It’s been almost two years since Loras detoxed, but he knows the signs better than any doctor. Already his head is pounding, sweat is starting to break out on the back of his neck, and his stomach is killing him. The guys who grabbed him shot him up every time he even started to come down, and his body is demanding more heroin.

They don’t believe him, his brothers and his father, and Loras can’t blame them. Heroin addicts never get the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to using. He’s lost count of how many times he’s lied to his family about using, how many stories he’s concocted to cover his ass and keep himself in cash and drugs. But this isn’t like crashing Margaery’s car or pawning his father’s coin collection; Jaime Lannister is missing, his hand removed, and it was Loras’s job to cover his back. Now everyone else is dead, and the only one left standing is the junkie who would do anything for a fix.

Loras isn’t sure how much he could’ve gotten for selling Jaime Lannister to his enemies, but if he had scored that much, he’d be dead.

He lies on a chaise in his father’s home office with two of his father’s men flanking him. Through the heavy door he can hear Mace shouting at Willas and Garlan, and Loras wishes he had the strength to walk in and defend them. His brothers and Margaery have done so much to keep him safe, and he wants to repay the favor.

Loras never set out to be an addict. If it hadn’t been for the fucking Lannisters cutting Renly’s brake line, he never would’ve touched the needle. Sure, he and Renly liked to party, but it was all in good fun then. For all the stupid shit they pulled, Renly desperately wanted his brothers’ approval and kept a steady eye on the line they couldn’t cross. Loras never understood why Renly gave a damn what his homophobe brothers thought of him, but he had cared deeply. It was why he took care of Edric for Robert and why he’d ask Loras to disappear when Robert or Stannis came to visit. For two guys as old school as them, Renly’s “preference” was an embarrassment.

“Do you want me to marry him?” Margaery asked one afternoon when he complained about Renly’s behavior, a playful smile on her face. “It’ll be the perfect solution. You can come live with us, I’ll be the trophy wife Dad has always wanted me to be, _and_ I’ll never have to fuck him. Sounds pretty perfect to me.”

“One big happy family: husband, boyfriend, and beard.”

Margaery laughed, draping her arm around his shoulders. “I hate to break it to you, but even marrying me wouldn’t completely convince people he’s straight. I’d be a goatee at best.”

Margaery was the only one who ever understood how much Renly meant to him. He wonders where she is today.

The Lannisters are going to kill him. Even withdrawing from massive amounts of heroin, Loras understands this. He is the last person to see Jaime alive and whole, and there is no way Tywin will accept his story about being grabbed and pumped full of drugs in a hotel room paid for with his aunt’s credit card. It looks like a badly planned scam, and if he was the one sent to deal with it, Loras knows what he’d do.

Memories from that night are patchy. They had to go to Jersey to pick up payoff money from a developer; it was an easy job and wouldn’t normally have been done by Jaime’s team, but Stannis’s men were hitting their guys left and right, so it was decided they’d do the pickup. Loras had been driving, Jaime in the passenger seat, when gunfire began raining down on them, high beams blinding him. Another car collided hard with theirs, sending the car Loras drove spinning, and the last thing he remembers is the familiar pinch of a needle in his arm.

He doesn’t know how his family is going to get him out of this one, and as Loras empties the contents of his stomach onto his father’s $20,000 rug, he isn’t sure if he wants them to. At least if he dies, he’ll be with Renly again.

* * *

“Your father has always put too much faith in those boys,” Olenna Tyrell declares as her town car glides through Philadelphia traffic. “I’ve told him from the start that if he wants things handled correctly, he needs to trust you more.”

Margaery softly sighs, looking away from the massive boathouses lining the drive and turning her attention to her grandmother. For a woman nearing ninety, she looks good for her age, and Margaery mentally calculates how much money in jewelry she’s wearing. While city squares are being flooded with protesters decrying the inequality of wealth distribution, Olenna Tyrell is fiercely proud of being a charter member of the one-percent.

“I think you could finance an entire third-world country with that ring,” she comments, pointing to the massive emerald on Olenna’s middle finger.

“Oh, Margaery, don’t start this bleeding heart stuff again. I give to charity. And you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying.”

Margaery offers her very best conciliatory smile. “Grandmother, I always listen to what you say. I just don’t happen to agree with you in this. I have no desire to handle the parts of the business the boys do.”

“You have a knack for it.”

Margaery remembers the desperate purple of Joffrey’s face as the poison worked its way into his system, paralyzing his system and slowly suffocating him. Until the day she dies, she’ll never forget the pitch of Cersei Lannister’s screams for help and the way Joffrey’s green eyes nearly exploded from his skull. Yes, it was easy to kill Joffrey, and it was the easiness of it that scared her the most.

“My talents are better used in other ways.”

“Spending your afternoons at some Catholic church in the ghetto?”

Margaery isn’t sure which word drips with more disdain: Catholic or ghetto. “It’s a perfectly fine neighborhood, and you shouldn’t say ghetto. It’s offensive.”

Olenna huffs a decidedly unladylike sound at that. “Honestly, dear, all of your intelligence, all of your talents, and you’re wasting yourself with these little pet projects.”

“I’m trying to make a difference,” Margaery corrects, irritation licking at her. “That’s what you taught me to do, isn’t it, change what I don’t like?”

“I meant in regards to the business, in your personal life. I didn’t mean for you to try to try to change the world, one poor person at a time.”

Frustrated, Margaery snaps, “You want me to use my intelligence? Well, here is how I see it. Despite having more than enough money, Dad decided to throw in with Tywin Lannister, a man who literally ordered the rape and murder of an innocent woman _and_ her children. He uses the office Tywin bought him to railroad poor Robb Stark and his men, who aren’t guilty of half so much evil as the Lannisters. Then he tells me that it’ll be best if I marry Joffrey to seal the deal. We’ve been in an all-out war with every other family since then and things never get better. So if I’m going to devote myself to a useless cause, I’d rather it be one that lets me sleep at night.”

Olenna studies her for a moment before declaring, “This is because of that girl.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Margaery chokes out, turning her face away and dropping her sunglasses firmly into place.

“You’re getting to be as bad as Loras,” Olenna continues disdainfully. “If the two of you had been realistic about these things, you wouldn’t be so hurt.”

Margaery furiously blinks back tears, clenching her fists tightly in her lap. She doesn’t want to talk about this, especially not with her grandmother. While most of her family has always accepted Loras being gay, for some reason such acceptance was denied to her. She is the only Tyrell daughter, and all of their plans involved marrying her into another powerful family. Her being a lesbian was never part of her parents’ plans, but it was acceptable enough so long as Margaery kept her affairs to herself. 

And then she met Sansa.

Philadelphia could be a small city, especially for people who operated in the circles her family did. Their relocation from Chicago coincided with her freshman year at Bryn Mawr, and it was at the end of that year Margaery met Sansa Stark.

She worked for admissions giving tours not because she needed the money but because she wanted to get closer to the junior who did the filing. Technically her shift was over when the Starks arrived for their tour, but the moment Margaery saw the tall, auburn haired girl who looked downright miserable, she knew she had to stay. And so Margaery put on her best smile, decided to skip sociology, and introduced herself to Sansa Stark.

The Starks were one of the most well known families in Philadelphia, and Margaery knew it. Her father had held some vague ideas about hooking her up with Robb Stark but then he eloped with some daughter of a Lannister man, breaking a longstanding engagement with Walder Frey’s daughter. “An absolute idiot,” Olenna dubbed him, and then Joffrey was being pursued.

Ned and Catelyn Stark didn’t trust her, and Margaery understood why. People judging her for her father’s actions was old hat. But she genuinely liked Sansa and her family, and despite her father pushing for it, Margaery truly wasn’t working an angle. She found Sansa attractive and wanted to know her better. That was it.

Sansa kissed her first. Margaery isn’t sure why that is so important to her now, but it is. It was still the first month of school then and Margaery sensed it was the first time Sansa had ever kissed a woman, a fact she confirmed later in their relationship. And that’s what it was. No matter how her family tries to dismiss it now, she and Sansa loved each other as much and as well as anyone. The only difficulty they ever had in their time together was Margaery’s family.

For all intents and purposes, Sansa lived in Margaery’s off-campus apartment the year Ned Stark was killed. They spent their days in class, their nights tangled up in their bed, and Margaery indulged in the sort of fantasies she tried to keep at bay: running away with Sansa, marrying her on the Cape, being decadently happy together. Sansa’s family supported her entirely; they still weren’t particularly fond of Margaery, but that could change. As for Margaery’s family…they’d come around.

She came home from class one afternoon to find her grandmother seated in the living room with her father. They told her Ned Stark had been killed, and they needed to prove loyalty to the Lannisters. “Joffrey likes you,” Mace said as if it explained everything, and before she even had a chance to protest, Mace handed her the engagement announcement that would run in _The Philadelphia Inquirier_ the next day.

Sansa never came back to their apartment. Jon Snow collected her belongings with a handful of Stark men, and Sansa changed her number. By the time Margaery gathered enough courage to send her a letter, the Red Wedding happened and the envelope came back to her, Sansa’s familiar handwriting boldly declaring,, **Return to Sender**.

She killed Joffrey as much for Sansa as it was to protect herself, but it was too late. Sansa would never forgive her, and Margaery lost her just as surely as Loras lost Renly.

“How will you get home?” Olenna asks as the town car stops in front of St. Michael’s.

“I’ll take the bus,” Margaery snaps, slamming the car door and hurrying up the stairs.

The church is empty when Margaery enters, her footsteps echoing. She sees a nun standing before the flickering candles, and she sidles up to her. Margaery lights a candle, unsure who she is doing it for; technically the Tyrells are Episcopalian, but Margaery can’t remember the last time they went to a service that wasn’t also a photo op.

“Father O’Sullivan is hearing confession if you’d like absolution, my dear.”

“There’s no absolution for me, Sister.” Margaery smiles at Sister Mordane. Once she had taught the Stark children in Sunday school and CCD. Sansa told her early on she trusted no one in the world as much as she did Sister Mordane. “Are they downstairs?”

Sister Mordane nods. “In the nursery.”

Margaery descends the narrow, musty staircase that leads to the downstairs classrooms. The nursery is at the far end of the hall, hidden near the back, and she knocks twice, then once, then twice again before entering, signaling to those inside to unlock the door.

Jeyne Stark opens it, her daughter on her hip, her son clinging to her leg. Behind her are poor Roslin Tully, her daughter Minnie, Alys Karstark, Wylla Manderly, and Lyanna Mormont.

“You’re late,” Jeyne chastises, all business as usual.

Margaery is always too late, but if she plays her cards right, maybe that can change.


End file.
